He Should Have Known
by crapwriting
Summary: Harry's finally going to do the hero thing and fulfill his destiny. There's only one person standing in his way.
1. Memories

Of course it would be him.

Out of all of the demons Harry had had to fight, all of the obstacles he'd overcome, the last person standing between him and Voldemort was Draco Malfoy.

He looked surprised. Maybe he hadn't expected Harry to get this far. Maybe he'd hoped he wouldn't.

Maybe he hadn't thought he'd be the one meeting him here.

"Potter."

And Harry was laughing - he hadn't laughed in years, couldn't even remember what it felt like to laugh until he walked into that courtyard and those eyes flashed behind that hood. Life was fucking funny.

Draco didn't think so. The eyes flashed again and then the hood was off, and Draco Malfoy was striding across the pebble to meet him. Harry stopped laughing and waited, twirling his wand in a manner that Hermione would have reprimanded him for years ago.

"What's so fucking funny, Potter?"

He was close. Too close. Harry took a step back, meeting his stare.

"Nothing. I just think it's brilliant that out of all of the spineless Death Eaters left, you would be the one I'd have to kill."

Silence then.

Harry was beginning to wonder if they'd simply stare at each other all day. Surely this wasn't what Voldemort had in mind.

"Are we done here?"

An odd expression overtook the other boy's features, but he didn't respond. Harry shrugged and shoved past him, towards the doorway into the house. A hand took firm hold of his upper arm, and Harry turned back around.

"What? I'm not just going to stand here and stare at you."

"Why are you doing this?"

Harry stared at him.

"I could ask you the same thing."

Draco shook his head, letting go of the other boy's arm.

"Don't give me that shit, Potter. You never cared, one way or the other."

Harry gawked at him now.

"How could you say that? And - " He glanced up at the house, gesturing with his wand, his face flushed. "Why _now_?"

Draco shrugged, leaning against one of the columns in the courtyard, watching Harry with the most irritatingly calm, scrutinizing gaze.

"Well, it's rather hard to get information out of the dead, isn't it?"

The tense, nauseous feeling that had been in Harry's stomach all day turned quite suddenly cold. It was thick, now. Heavy. Weighing him down.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

If he was looking for some sort of acknowledgement of their past, some sort of flicker of compassion, he wouldn't find it. Draco glared at him.

"I'm confident you're a moron, does that count?"

Harry turned on his heel again. He didn't have time for this shit. He probably should have known not to turn his back on a Death Eater. Maybe if Malfoy hadn't taken off his mask, Harry wouldn't have. And now he was frozen in place, and there was nothing he could do. Footsteps. If he could have sighed, he would have.

Malfoy was standing in front of him now, smirking, and holding his wand in a pensive manner as he eyed Harry.

"Oh, Potter. You really are quite attractive when you're on a mission."

Warning bells were going off somewhere in Harry's subconscious. _You've made a mistake. You've been too hasty. You weren't thinking._

No. No, Harry was ready for this. Once Malfoy finished his waffling, he'd release him, and Harry would run off and play the hero, just like everyone had always expected him too. Only Draco wasn't talking. He was only watching.

Memories.

"Good luck, Potter."

He'd cried. He hadn't told anyone, especially not him. But he had cried that night. He still thought it was stupid. This whole bloody war was stupid, but the fact that Draco was siding against him…

She'd warned him not to get caught in memories. Hermione knew. She had believed in inter-house unity once upon a time, but that was before Ron fell. And she had told Harry not to think about it. About him. _He's not the same person, Harry. Not if he's siding with them._

Harry was jolted out of his reverie at Draco's laughter. That laugh. That laugh was off, too. Maybe he had changed. Harry didn't remember him this way. He had mourned Draco for years, but never actually thought he was dead.

Now he wondered.

The face was changing. The eyes were different now. Cold. Red. Dead.

Voldemort laughed at him now, twirling Draco's wand, wearing Draco's cloak. Circling Draco's former lover.

He should have known.


	2. Waking Up

The first thing he realised was how cold he was. The second thing was the pain. It took several minutes for Draco to convince himself to open his eyes.

He didn't know this place. Not at first glance. But as his eyes swept the darkened stone walls with bars of moonlight cutting across them as if they weren't made of stone at all… He knew.

He was only on the wrong side of the bars this time.

He shivered again, realising that he was quite naked, and hugging his knees to his chest. He felt as though he'd been pummeled by herds of hippogriffs the night before. And no matter how much Potter teased him, years after his first encounter with one of those ghastly beasts - it hurt.

Potter.

It was like suddenly remembering a dream. Emotionally so clear but otherwise intangible. Potter had something to do with all of this but the memories were refusing to fall into place. He put his hands to his head. It ached. Ached like the first time He had ever intruded upon his thoughts, screaming at him.

Potter had taught him a lot. Potter had taught him enough to keep Potter a secret, at least at first. And he didn't know, didn't care, probably, but Draco had. Potter would never understand how much it hurt.

Harry was many delicious, complex things, but when it came to his emotions there remained a childlike simplicity to figuring them out. It was his biggest vulnerability. Draco knew that, and he knew that Potter did not.

There was a noise, somewhere in the darkness where the moon's light wouldn't trespass. Draco squinted into the blackness but was rewarded with nothing. He shivered again. How the fuck had he ended up here? 

There it was again. This time he recognised the noise as a cough. A familiar cough. But sometimes one's ears heard things they wanted to hear, instead of what was actually there. Draco knew this well, and so he sat back against the wall, and waited.

One of the powerful, slashing beams of moonlight shifted as a figure broke its line.

"Potter."

He shouldn't have spoken, this he knew before he opened his mouth. The figure froze.

"Draco?"

This was a terrible lie. This was all a terrible, awful, fake lie. There was no way things were going to end this way. There was no way Draco and Harry were trapped in cells mere metres away from each other in the dungeons of Voldemort's fortress, simply awaiting execution. He didn't want to answer this time, and his mouth obeyed him.

But there was more shuffling from the cell across the way and now a familiar, yet paler face was pressed against the bars, his glasses missing along with his clothes. Draco stared.

"Fuck."

Harry squinted into the darkness before backing into his cell again. Had that been fear? Now Draco was intrigued. He convinced himself that the wave of nausea he had just experienced was owed more to Harry's naked and moonlit body than the fact that the boy seemed afraid of him, and Draco stood quickly, striding across his cell to the bars.

"Potter, what the fuck do you think you're doing here?"

Silence rang through the dungeons. Draco wondered where the other prisoners were. Wondered why Voldemort would leave his most prized capture without a guard. He scowled into the darkness and as he focused on it, he heard something else. Shouting.

His eyes flickered back to the stripes of light invading Harry's cell, but there was no sign of the other man.

It had probably been another dream. These happened to Draco more frequently as the years progressed. He would find the hero in the most unlikely of places. They would talk. Reminisce. Hate each other. And Draco would wake up. Always, he woke up and Harry was gone.

But Harry was gone and he hadn't woken up yet.

"Hallucinations don't suit you Draco," he mumbled to himself as he returned to his seat against the wall.

"Is it really you this time?"

Draco froze in a rather awkward pose, midway towards his seat at the back of the cell. He did not have the same advantage as Harry - windows faced his cell higher up, and moonbeams striped his figure wherever he sat. Resigned to be calm, he took a seat, pulling his knees close to him again and staring into the darkness.

"No, Potter, it's Granger. What the fuck do you mean?"

But his chest had done something weird at those words. Maybe Harry was having the dreams too.

There was another sound from the other cell and Harry was pressed against the bars again, trying his best to survey the dungeons before fixing his stare on Draco, still squinting from the loss of his spectacles.

"Why are you in here?"

Draco opened his mouth to retort but found that he was unable to come up with a suitable response. He glared at the other boy instead.

"Why do you suddenly care?"

Harry shrugged and turned, and the darkness had swallowed him again in the next second. Draco cursed under his breath. How had he gotten here?

He leaned his head back against the cool stone, closing his eyes as a barrage of disconnected images passed through his mind's eye. His left arm burned, and the sensation was so remarkably clear that he opened his eyes to examine the pale, unmarred flesh.

He was obviously here because the Dark Lord wished it so, though he could not fathom why.

"I can tell you why."

That annoyingly comforting and familiar voice broke the silence again. Draco glared at the other man who was watching him closely through the bars. It was rather pathetic of Draco to have forgotten such an important detail about Harry. But as his eyes swept the man's naked form once more, he smirked.

"You don't have your wand."

"He destroyed it."

Draco gaped for a second but recovered.

"You can't do that without a wand, Potter, I don't care if you're The Boy Who Legilimens."

Harry wrinkled his nose and shifted his feet, and Draco noted, not for the first time that evening, that Potter made no move to cover himself, even with his advantage of the darkened cell.

"I can sort of… feel, sometimes. And I know you don't remember. You've been out for days."

Days?

Draco stared at him but found no way to contradict Harry's words.

"Fine."

He thought the moonlight caught a fragmented smile on Harry's face, but it was gone before Draco could tell for sure.

"He pretended to be you. And got me. He knew."

His ears were ringing now. He didn't know if Harry was talking or not anymore, something ironic considering all of those nights where he had heard the other's voice and he had not been there. He sighed and leaned his head back, closing his eyes and threading his fingers through his hair.

"Potter?"

"Yea?"

"Do you understand now?"

"Yes."

Draco nodded, and his hands were wet. He couldn't remember having cried before, not since childhood.

"Draco?"

He didn't try to answer the boy, instead dragging his hands over his face and looking up rather defiantly.

"I'm sorry."

**FIN**


End file.
